Hudson Independent: Sleepy Hollow Trustee Candidates Convey Views on Village Issues

 

By Robert Kim­mel- 

Each of the four can­di­dates com­pet­ing for the three open seats on the Sleepy Hol­low Board of Trustees in next Tues­day’s elec­tions have pro­vided res­i­dents with broad views on where they stand on a va­ri­ety of is­sues fac­ing the vil­lage.

The can­di­dates’ po­si­tions on an ar­ray of sub­jects were ex­pressed dur­ing an on­line fo­rum con­ducted this past Wednes­day evening, March 10th. Aimed at ad­vanc­ing the elec­toral process, the fo­rum was co-spon­sored by the League of Women Vot­ers of the River­towns and Moth­ers Out Front Westch­ester River­towns.

Three of the four can­di­dates, Denise Scaglione, Jared Ro­driguez, and Tom An­druss, are com­pet­ing in the March 16^th bal­lot­ing as mem­bers of the Unite Sleepy Hol­low party, which has led Mayor Ken Wray’s ad­min­is­tra­tion since 2015. Daniel Con­vis­sor is in­de­pen­dently pur­su­ing a trustee seat un­der the ban­ner of what he calls the Change for the Bet­ter party.

Along with the trustee con­tenders, Wray is pur­su­ing his sev­enth term, run­ning un­op­posed, as is Kather­ine Bald­win, who will be on the bal­lot to con­tinue in her post as Vil­lage Jus­tice. Nei­ther were Fo­rum par­tic­i­pants. The ses­sion was mod­er­ated by Kather­ine De­r­ing, a mem­ber of the League of Women Vot­ers of North­east Westch­ester.

Is­sues dis­cussed at the Fo­rum ranged from the re­vi­tal­iza­tion of Beek­man Av­enue’s down­town busi­ness dis­trict, an­tic­i­pated ad­di­tional traf­fic from the Edge -On-Hud­son de­vel­op­ment, to taxes and po­lice re­form. In open­ing state­ments, the four can­di­dates gave brief de­scrip­tions of their qual­i­fi­ca­tions and the vil­lage sub­jects of most in­ter­est to them.

Scaglione said she is pur­su­ing a third term as a vil­lage trustee and has lived in the vil­lage for 22 years with her hus­band and two sons, one of whom at­tends Sleepy Hol­low High School and with the el­dest now in col­lege. As a trustee, she has worked on de­sign plans for the 28-acre Vil­lage Com­mons, De­vries Park, and the restora­tion of the Pocan­tico River shore­line. Scaglione also men­tioned her vol­un­tary in­volve­ment with ath­letic ac­tiv­i­ties at Sleepy Hol­low High School.

She has also been in­volved in work­ing on the vil­lage’s Com­pre­hen­sive Plan, and has been ac­tive in the El­e­men­tary Par­ent/​Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (EPTA) of the Tar­ry­towns and as a Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Philipse Manor Beach Club. If re-elected Tues­day, she said she would be the longest serv­ing trustee.

Con­vis­sor ex­plained he has been a res­i­dent of Sleepy Hol­low since 2013, liv­ing here with his wife and two chil­dren. Shortly af­ter his ar­rival, he said he be­came a mem­ber of Sleepy Hol­low’s En­vi­ron­men­tal Ad­vi­sory Com­mit­tee and also ob­served how the vil­lage worked. He has watched or tes­ti­fied at more than 90 Board of Trustee meet­ings. He noted that he led sev­eral park clean-ups, and pro­vided in­for­ma­tion on how to make Route 9 and nine in­ter­sec­tions down­town safer. His work, he said, had him in­volved with vil­lage staff and elected of­fi­cials.

Ro­driguez stated that he is liv­ing down­town in Sleepy Hol­low with his wife and young son Calvin, re­sid­ing in a two-fam­ily house while restor­ing it and mak­ing it “su­per en­ergy ef­fi­cient.”

He said, “In my ca­reer I’ve made a big im­pact on re­duc­ing en­ergy con­sump­tion in very large, mul­ti­fam­ily and com­mer­cial build­ings and help­ing com­mu­ni­ties and small busi­nesses in the Hud­son Val­ley plan for a bet­ter fu­ture.” He has also worked on trans­porta­tion needs in the met­ro­pol­i­tan area and is “ad­vis­ing the City and State of New York, on ad­dress­ing the chal­lenge of rapid cli­mate change.”  Ro­driguez de­scribed grow­ing up in Haver­straw and hav­ing earned a de­gree at Tufts Uni­ver­sity in en­gi­neer­ing and ar­chi­tec­ture.  At N.Y.U. he re­ceived a Mas­ters of Sci­ence in real es­tate de­vel­op­ment.

An­druss, also on the Unite Sleepy Hol­low ticket, has lived in the Philipse Manor area for 14 years with his wife and two teenage daugh­ters. He de­scribed hav­ing served in sev­eral vol­un­teer roles, mostly as a mem­ber of the Sleepy Hol­low Plan­ning Board for the last three years. An­druss said, “I am ex­cited to have this op­por­tu­nity to serve the com­mu­nity as a mem­ber of the Board of Trustees,” adding, “I be­lieve Sleepy Hol­low is on the right track.”

“The lead­er­ship of the United Sleepy Hol­low party, with Mayor Wray and the cur­rent Board of Trustees, is the big rea­son Sleepy Hol­low is mak­ing progress, “An­druss said. “Those of us on the Unite ticket have a record of co­op­er­a­tion, thought­ful­ness and col­lab­o­ra­tion and can achieve great re­sults.”

A ques­tion from a res­i­dent asked about the ef­fec­tive­ness of the vil­lage’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion with its pop­u­la­tion and what the can­di­dates might change.

“The vil­lage does a lot to reach out to the com­mu­nity,” Scaglione replied, cit­ing email blasts that are sent out and a quar­terly newslet­ter. How­ever, she said the email reaches only about 3,000 ad­dresses, and the word has to get out to have more peo­ple sign-up for the emails.

Con­vis­sor also noted the need for more peo­ple to re­ceive the emails, and sug­gested the use of Span­ish in pro­mot­ing their ex­is­tence. He pro­posed hav­ing post cards sent out. Ad­vance in­for­ma­tion about trustee ses­sions and top­ics are needed, he added.

“I think the vil­lage is do­ing a lot right, par­tic­u­larly with the email blasts,” Ro­driguez, said. He main­tained that tech­nol­ogy and so­cial me­dia could be uti­lized to im­prove get­ting the word out. “One of my pri­or­i­ties would be to reach the Latino com­mu­nity; a lot of my neigh­bors are not in­volved.”

“More com­mu­ni­ca­tion could be go­ing out, and it should be bilin­gual,” An­druss said. How­ever, he em­pha­sized, “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion is a two-way street, and peo­ple should be at­tend­ing meet­ings.” An­druss also said that there are email ad­dresses and phone num­bers by which vil­lagers could com­mu­ni­cate with of­fi­cials and staff mem­bers.

What part should lo­cal gov­ern­ment play in pur­su­ing New York poli­cies for deal­ing with cli­mate change was an­other ques­tion asked of the can­di­dates.

Con­vis­sor, an ad­vo­cate of bik­ing, de­scribed the biggest im­pact as be­ing trans­porta­tion and called for greater bike use along with more ef­fi­cient re­cy­cling of waste.

En­cour­ag­ing the use of al­ter­nate en­ergy sources was An­druss’ ini­tial sug­ges­tion, and he stated the vil­lage has to ad­vise de­vel­op­ers, builders, and home­own­ers what the new rules are and en­cour­age them to use them. “Make sure de­vel­op­ers work within the rules us­ing more mod­ern and ef­fi­cient ways,” he said.

Ro­driguez in­di­cated that he has been “heav­ily in­volved with the com­mu­nity pro­fes­sion­ally re­gard­ing en­ergy sources and re­quire­ments.” He also cited the need to push de­vel­op­ers to meet en­ergy re­quire­ments and to make re­duc­tions in en­ergy use.

Scaglione re­capped that Sleepy Hol­low has been di­rected to­ward be­ing a cli­mate smart com­mu­nity and that it also par­tic­i­pates with Sus­tain­able Westch­ester in hav­ing res­i­dents uti­lize clean en­ergy sources.

Not­ing that Sleepy Hol­low has a di­verse com­mu­nity, a query brought up con­cerns that there was a lack of unity and asked what could be done to bring the com­mu­nity closer to­gether.

An­druss sug­gested that, through his ex­pe­ri­ence as a youth soc­cer coach, (in one case for his daugh­ter’s team) such sports ac­tiv­i­ties and pro­grams bring chil­dren from dif­fer­ent back­grounds to­gether. He said the de­vel­op­ment of a recre­ational area “will serve to bet­ter con­nect all of our var­i­ous pop­u­la­tions.”

Ro­driguez said he and his wife made a con­scious de­ci­sion to live in a highly di­verse com­mu­nity, both cul­tur­ally and so­cio-eco­nom­i­cally. He called for vil­lage in­vest­ment in Beek­man Av­enue in or­der to  have a di­ver­sity of busi­nesses. He said, “Let’s get the en­tire com­mu­nity to come to Beek­man to do their shop­ping so they are phys­i­cally around their neigh­bors.”

In re­sponse to an­other ques­tion brought up sep­a­rately about “fa­voritism” in the vil­lage, Ro­driguez said “that is ex­actly why Unite Sleepy Hol­low has me on their ticket. I can rep­re­sent res­i­dents who live down­town, who cur­rently don’t have rep­re­sen­ta­tion. I can bring a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive to the board.”

Hav­ing had per­sonal in­volve­ment with many dif­fer­ent sports groups, Scaglione said she and her hus­band had worked with fam­i­lies from all over Sleepy Hol­low and Tar­ry­town. She also de­scribed a re­cent vil­lage hir­ing as a pur­suit to di­ver­sify its staff.

A com­mu­nity cen­ter down­town was Con­vis­sor’s sug­ges­tion. It would “stim­u­late ac­tiv­ity that would bring to­gether peo­ple from all over the vil­lage to the stores,” he stated. He also called for ve­hi­cle free means to have peo­ple get around on their own, “… peo­ple walk­ing, dy­nam­ics on the street,” as he de­scribed it.

How to im­prove the num­bers and sus­tain­abil­ity of small busi­nesses in down­town Sleepy Hol­low was an­other ques­tion asked of the can­di­dates.

Ro­driguez men­tioned the vil­lage’s new Com­pre­hen­sive Plan, part of which is aimed at that prob­lem. “Line by line re­form of the Zon­ing Code… needs to be made to make our down­town cor­ri­dor a more vi­brant walk­ing cor­ri­dor.”

“Zon­ing rules which, as an ex­am­ple, pro­hibit restau­rants and bars from lo­cat­ing within 200 feet of an­other, would get thrown out,” he said. Park­ing re­quire­ments for es­tab­lish­ments are also tar­geted for re­form­ing, he noted.

Scaglione also ref­er­enced zon­ing changes needed to im­prove the busi­ness dis­trict, and she also de­scribed the restau­rant dis­tanc­ing reg­u­la­tions as “kind of silly.” She said rec­om­men­da­tions within the Com­pre­hen­sive Plan need to be ap­proved to make the needed changes.

That sen­ti­ment was echoed by An­druss, who said, “Zon­ing is the key.” There were a num­ber of items re­quir­ing changes that would lead to in­creas­ing busi­nesses in the down­town ar­eas, An­druss stated.

Con­vis­sor’s first re­sponse was “Ditto!” The need is also to make down­town “more walk­a­ble and bike­able,” he sug­gested and called for af­ford­able hous­ing and busi­ness rents as well as not hav­ing park­ing take up space for stores and hous­ing.

A dis­cus­sion also em­braced the ques­tion of po­lice re­form in the vil­lage. There was some crit­i­cism that Sleepy Hol­low po­lice re­form was slower and not as trans­par­ent as in other mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

Ro­driguez smil­ingly sug­gested that the other mu­nic­i­pal­ity might be Tar­ry­town. He had heard, he said, “Tar­ry­town hired a fa­cil­i­ta­tor to help get their process done. Un­for­tu­nately, it is ex­tremely ex­pen­sive, but it would have been bet­ter if we did.” He called it “a for­ever process. Com­mu­nity out­reach is needed, so that we have unity,” he added, re­mind­ing lis­ten­ers that re­form is a state re­quire­ment.

Scaglione af­firmed that poli­cies re­gard­ing polic­ing “have to be reval­u­ated. A ne­ces­sity.” She de­scribed meet­ings aimed at that are mak­ing progress. “The Po­lice De­part­ment is mak­ing great strides to clean it­self up,” she stated.

Con­vis­sor called po­lice ac­tions, “a cru­cial part of our lives. How po­lice re­spond to all, sorts of hap­pen­ings. Thus, trans­parency with our po­lice de­part­ment is nec­es­sary.”

“I have heard noth­ing but glow­ing re­views of the Sleepy Hol­low Po­lice De­part­ment,” An­druss de­clared. “How­ever, I am cer­tainly in fa­vor of the re­view process. And it does­n’t have to stop at the end of this cy­cle.”

The hour-and-a-half Can­di­dates Fo­rum in­cluded other ques­tions re­volv­ing around such mat­ters as safety on the streets, af­ford­abil­ity of hous­ing, and an­tic­i­pated traf­fic caused by the Edge-on-Hud­son de­vel­op­ment and other con­struc­tion.

A link to a record­ing of the full Can­di­dates Fo­rum is avail­able at https://​www.youtube.com/​watch?v=0cU­Gok98IRI.  Sleepy Hol­low vot­ers  will be able to cast bal­lots from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Tues­day, March 16th at nine polling dis­trict lo­ca­tions. Those lo­ca­tions are in­di­cated on a link found on the vil­lage’s web­site: sleepy­hol­lowny.gov.